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Remarkable podcast because of the excellent summary of the religion of the Left. James Lileks spoke about his daughter’s indoctrination by the school system. Dennis P. summed it all up with his comment on what gets taught – bananas versus classical music.

Peter’s comments on the research findings that Dads are happier than men without children but there is no difference between women who are or are not Mums made me realize that I MISSED the whole point of that posting. I thought the research was saying Dads have got happier over the past years but not mums. Should have read the link!

That is a whole other discussion. Was I the only dumbkopf? Can we discuss this again?

The chat about the funding of basic research overlooked an important point about costs and incentives: you can’t patent the law of gravity or Maxwell’s equations or the Higgs boson. Even though scientific curiosity, ambition, etc., are incentives to make basic discoveries there is, in general, no way to recoup the costs of the research in the marketplace. That’s the case for public funding of basic (as opposed to applied) research.

I agree with you about research. Unfortunately, we have traded research for entitlements. Over the past 50 years we have spent on average 1.4-1.5% on research. We presently spend .8% on research. If we had a budget that normalized everything to their long term averages and a capped the total at 18% of GDP, we would have to INCREASE scientific research 10 billion.

We can accomodate everybody we just cant be stupid, and we have to make choices. With 2.2 Trillion on entitlements, and the upper limit on the size of government at 2.6 Trillion, there is no money for research, there is barely any money for government at all.

There is room in america for more than one opinion, but we have to share what exists.

Great interview of Dennis — thanks, guys. I’ve been a member of Pragertopia from the very first day it started and it’s so nice to hear how much you guys like Prager, too. He’s a national treasure and you guys really helped flesh out his thoughts on how great this country is.

EJ, please consider sprucing up kateivs’ (pretty) picture with an avatar or something. I mean if she would just brighten it up it would help. I know she’s too modest to ask and it’s been bugging me for a while how dark it is.

That sound of the squirrel being chased across the desk was Dennis’ minions trying to fix the audio. You win some, you lose some. For more Dennis but less echo, I recommend this edition of the podcast from last fall.

Depressing… Someone uses the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” and doesn’t have the basic response of “Well, the ten commandments are a good example, heard of those?” Dang, I know I’m a total trepenwitz, but I think I could manage that much!

Did some research (AKA, walked over and asked TrueBlue) and his response was to have his eyes go out of focus and basically say: “Wow… that is a HUGE category… I have no idea where to START. Um. Family? Not killing the victims, like with rape?” Once I suggested the Ten Commandments as a starting point, he agreed, but the point about people not knowing where to start has some point.